


Older Than Her Name

by KitMiller



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Betaed, Caves, Existential Crisis, Families of Choice, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Light Angst, Of the familial/platonic kind, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29583723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitMiller/pseuds/KitMiller
Summary: This one involves a cave, a love letter written in cuneiform, existentialism, and getting drunk on excellent wine with people you love.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	Older Than Her Name

_May 20**_

Nile swears to never complain about rickety safe houses with cold showers and dodgy plumping ever again. Because rickety though those may be, they at least have showers and plumbing and heating. 

Caves, on the other hand, are cold and drafty and the floor is hard. They don't have plumbing at all. The worst accommodations in the Army hadn't been this bad. But this is where the team has ended up, so she grits her teeth and bears it. 

And hey, she might find even more of Andy's random antiques. She's already spied some paintings that pique her interest, tucked away under an army's worth of rusty helmets, swords, and halberds. 

Andy is sitting on her bedroll, her back against a large wooden crate. Her eyes are closed, but Nile doubts she's sleeping very deeply. She's only ever seen Andy sleep deeply once, and given that Nile had then put handcuffs on her and pulled a gun on the pilot, she understands why she's a light sleeper.

Joe and Nicky are on the other side of the fire pit, squabbling over who gets the Nintendo Switch first. Nicky is currently making an impassioned speech in French about the Lynel he wants to avenge himself on. Joe replies in teasing Arabic, and it's the kind Nile doesn't understand anything of. But from his tone, she guesses he is quite happy to let Nicky enact merciless revenge on that Lynel, but equally happy to watch him rile himself up a little. 

Nile smiles to herself as she piles up the dry wood, then starts a fire. Joe taught her how to use a flint-and-steel, because, as he explained, lighters always run out of fuel at the worst possible moment, and matches get damp or break. Flint-and-steel is more reliable. Nile even has a tinderbox now. She'd never thought she'd ever have a tinderbox. It's a repurposed candy tin — it still smells faintly of the raspberry-flavoured throat lozenges it used to hold. Joe, Nicky, and Andy's are proper tinderboxes, of course, which they've had for a long time, maybe centuries. 

Nile fans the fire a little, watching the flames lick higher, and the shadows dance across the cave walls. This one doesn't have any of the rudimentary electricity the mine in France is outfitted with, but it's smaller and thus warmer.

She looks over at Joe and Nicky, who are now sitting nestled together, Nicky's back against Joe's chest. Nicky has the Switch, Joe is reading a book that's falling apart at the spine.

Nile turns. "Andy?"

Andy immediately wakes and looks at her.

"Got any books around here I can read?"

Andy frowns a little. "I don't know. There's books in that trunk over there —" she gestures to a massive wooden chest — "but I can't be sure if any of them are in English."

"You could practice your Italian," Nicky suggests without looking up from the Switch.

"Please do, it's atrocious," Joe adds, flipping a page. 

Nicky elbows him. "Be nice."

Nile huffs in mock offence and heaves open the lid of the trunk.

The dusty smell of old books wafts out and she smiles. The topmost book is a large, leather bound codex; she almost doesn't dare move it aside. There's a handful of wrinkly, yellowed paperbacks underneath. Two are written in Chinese, which Nile can't read, another is in German and yet another in a language she doesn't even recognise. She flips the one in German over to read the summary on the back and pieces together that it's some kind of guide or handbook. She puts it aside.

Sitting atop a sheaf of loose sheets of paper and some scrolls is a piece of clay the size of Nile's palm. Nile turns the strange slap over in her hands. The other side is covered in uneven grooves arranged in lines. It looks almost like — no, it doesn't just look like writing. It _is_ writing. 

She turns to Andy, eyes wide. "You have a cuneiform tablet just lying around?"

Andy shrugs. 

"Can you read it?"

"Sure." Andy holds out her hand and Nile puts the tablet on her palm with the utmost care. Andy looks at it for a moment, her eyes moving along the lines. She starts smiling faintly.

"What does it say?" Nile asks. 

"It's a letter," Andy replies. "A love letter from a girl I knew back then."

Nile nods before the full import of the words has hit her.

This isn't just a random bit of cuneiform Andy has found and then decided to keep. This is something written specifically to her. Andy got a love letter in the oldest writing system in the world.

Which must mean...

"How old _are_ you?" Nile demands. "I'm not asking for the exact number. Give it to me in centuries."

Andy's eyes bore into her. Then she looks down into the flames. She's thinking. Oh God, she is actually having to think about how old she is.

Andy looks at Nile. Shit, her eyes are burning. Nile can't meet them. "I have lived for somewhere between six and seven millenia. Closer to seven."

Nile blinks. Then she turns. And leaves. The blood is rushing in her ears. She's vaguely aware of Nicky's voice, but she barrels past him up to the cave entrance.

She goes to sit on a log under the stars and quietly freaks out. She had assumed Andy to be maybe three thousand years old, four at a stretch, as old as Ancient Greece, because that's the oldest evidence Copley had put on his conspiracy wall. And she's had a hard enough time wrapping her head around that. Turns out, she is even older. By _millenia_.

"Nile?" 

She turns. It's Joe and Nicky. 

"Are you all right?" asks Joe. "We asked Andy and she just said it's better if we talk to you instead of her."

"Andy is six thousand years old," Nile replies.

Nicky eases himself down next to her. "And then some, yes."

"Don't worry, we freaked out, too." Joe sits down on her other side.

"So she told you guys?"

"When we first met her, yes," replies Joe. He leans back to look up at the stars. "I'm afraid our reaction wasn't — it wasn't exactly a good one."

"No," murmurs Nile. "I know the feeling." She takes a few deep breaths. Her heart is still beating violently.

"She never told Booker because of that, I think," Nicky muses. The name hangs heavy between them. 

They sit in silence for a while, just looking out into the night. Joe and Nicky are two steady, warm presences to either side of Nile, and that is enough to calm her down. 

"I'm just —" she falters. Nicky leans towards her, just a little, and Joe tilts his head at her. "She's — she's so old. Lived for so long, I mean. And I — I don't even know what the world was like six thousand years ago! My knowledge of history kind of stops in Ancient Greece." She pauses. "And then I think about — about living just as long. And I can't —" she breaks off and looks down at her hands. Next to her, Joe shifts, and puts his hand on her back; Nicky has his on her shoulder. "Booker couldn't take it after two hundred," she gets out. "Am I going to end up like him? Or like Andy?" She shakes her head and looks down at her hands, blurry through gathering tears.

Now Nicky puts his arm all the way around her shoulders. "It's all right, Nile," he murmurs. 

"Sometimes," Nile says in a rush of breath, "it's still too much, you know? It feels like yesterday when I was still a Marine and everything was fine and, and… normal." She has to stop for a moment. "Andy has lived for so long. You guys have lived for so long. I can't wrap my mind around me living for so long." She looks up at the stars, blinking against tears. "Most of all, though, it all reminds me that I'll never see my family again."

Nicky shifts, but says nothing. Joe sighs. "Nile…"

"I won't," Nile says. "Try to contact them, that is. Copley told them I was dead. I made that decision. I can't… I can't go back. But Andy can't even remember her family. I'm — I'm not sure I can deal with me forgetting mine one day."

They're quiet for a little while. A breeze picks up, rustling through the pine trees. Nile shivers.

Nicky tuts and stands. "We should go back inside. Come. You'll catch your death."

"It's not like it would stick," Nile mutters, but follows him. Joe briefly puts his hand on her back, and smiles at her. 

They pick their way back down through the steep tunnel in the half-light of an old, battered storm lantern. Nile slips at one point, but Joe catches her immediately and doesn't let go until she's steady again.

Andy is by the fire, poking at it with a stick. Her face is dark like thunderclouds. 

Nile squares her shoulders, tilts her chin up, and goes to sit cross-legged beside her. Andy looks up, and Nile looks back resolutely. 

"I'm sorry, Andy," Nile says. 

Andy looks genuinely puzzled, a look Nile doesn't think she's ever seen on her. "What for?"

"I reacted badly. I — I freaked out and left and… that was super rude."

Andy's staring at her. Nile swears her jaw has gone slack, too. 

She continues. "No matter how old, you're still a person and I didn't treat you like one. I shouldn't have run off without a word. That was very, very rude of me."

Andy laughs, once, a startling sound. She's still got a baffled expression but now she's smiling, too. "Will you ever stop surprising me, Nile?" she asks.

Nile grins. "I do my best."

Joe is rummaging through some crates at the far end of the cave. Finally, he gives a triumphant "Aha! I knew we left some of these here!" and returns with a dusty bottle. 

Nicky's eyebrows shoot up. "Is that —"

"It sure is." Joe deftly uncorks the bottle. "The best wine this side of the Alps," he says to Nile. "Unfortunately the vineyard closed down thirty years ago. Nicky, can you —"

Nicky has already gathered four brightly coloured plastic cups. 

"I want green," Nile says.

Nicky hands her the green cup, and Joe immediately fills it.

"Do we still have some of that bread from that place in Tirol?" asks Andy.

"A little," Nicky replies, pulling his backpack towards him. He frowns into it. "Let me make us something up." A few minutes later, he presents an assortment of fresh apples and grapes, dried apricots, figs, and tomatoes, raisins, hazelnuts and walnuts, fluffy, white bread, hard cheese, and three different kinds of salami. Joe has already reduced the pile of raisins to almost nothing, but that's fine by Nile.

They settle around the campfire. Nile munches on a handful of walnuts and stares into the fire. "Ancient Greece was, like, three thousand years ago," she says.

"Thereabouts, yes," says Nicky, plucking a few raisins from Joe's unprotesting hand.

"So, then," Nile starts. She looks at Andy, who looks back blankly. "If you predate Ancient Greece. And your name is Greek. Your real name — is it even Andromache?"

Andy looks at her for a moment, not speaking. "My real name is Andy," she says. There's a finality to her tone that brooks no argument. "My full name is Andromache the Scythian." She exchanges looks with Joe and Nicky that Nile can't begin to decipher. "The name my mother gave me is lost to the steppe," Andy continues quietly, looking down at her hands. "But no, it was not Andromache, if that's what you're asking."

Nile doesn't know how to respond. She turns the cuneiform tablet over in her hand, studying it by the flickering firelight. Nile trails the grooves of the letters with her finger. "You're older than writing," she says.

Andy puts down her cup. She nods, but doesn't say anything.

"And that means you're older than books," Nile continues.

Andy nods again, not meeting Nile's eyes. 

"Are you embarrassed, Andy?" Joe asks, incredulous but with amusement. 

"Shut up," Andy mutters, but it doesn't escape Nile that her lips twitch into the hint of a smile.

Nicky smiles at them both, and Nile chuckles into her cup. A thought comes to her and she looks up. "Are you older than wine?" 

Andy cracks another smile, bigger this time, and shakes her head. 

"Thank God for that," Nicky says drily. He gestures with the bottle, and all three thrust their cups towards him. He fills Nile's first. "It's good, right?"

"Amazing," Nile replies. 

"But Andy is older than most things you know," Joe says. "Swords. For example."

Nile starts. "No way."

"Yes," Andy replies. 

"And scissors," Joe adds.

"Well," Nicky says. "Scissors for cutting."

"What other kind is — oh." Nile's face heats up, and Nicky and Joe dissolve into helpless giggles. Andy shoves Nicky, grinning, and he falls dramatically across Joe. 

"Ok, fuck," Nile exclaims. "Are you older than —" she thinks for a moment. "Glass," she says arbitrarily.

Andy nods.

Nile knocks back the rest of her wine and pours herself another cup. "Horses."

Again, Andy nods, and this time Joe and Nicky join in her improvised drinking game.

"Paper," Joe offers.

Andy lifts her cup at him. "Drink up."

Joe is only all too happy to oblige. He leans towards Nile. "Andy is so much older than you can imagine," he says cheerily. He counts on his fingers. "She's older than ink, and silk, and carrots, and forks, and most civilisations you've ever heard of, and, and —" he stops like a steam engine running out of steam. 

Nile grins. "Taxes."

Andy, Joe, and Nicky laugh. And drink. "By two millenia!" Andy croons. Then waves her hand around. "Or some such shit."

"And you never paid a single tax since then," Nile says. 

"What's the saying?" Nicky is snapping his fingers, which he and Joe always do when they're trying to remember something in a particular language. Nile wonders who picked up the habit from whom. "Joe, help me out, something about taxes and dying."

"The only certain things in life are death and taxes," Nile supplies.

"Not for us!" Joe shouts, lifting his cup so jerkily some of the wine spills over the rim.

"Hey, hey, Nile, by the way —" Andy leans her chin on her hand and grins. "Not just taxes. The concept of money itself."

"Fuck! Off!"

*

The night continues on like this for a while longer, with laughter and excellent wine. But at some point, Nile's questions come more slowly, and her reactions grow more quiet, until the four of them finish the bottle in silence. 

Nile falls asleep curled up by the fire. Joe is dozing on Nicky's shoulder. Nicky has trouble keeping his eyes open, too. Andy gets up, and he blinks at her sleepily. "I'll take watch," she tells him quietly.

He nods. 

When she passes Nile, Andy carefully pulls a blanket over her. 

Outside, Andy sits on the log in front of the cave entrance. The wind rustles through the pine trees. The sound is not unlike that of the sea. An owl hoots up above, and a mouse squeaks in the bushes.

Andy doesn't remember the girl who had written her the letter. Not her face or her name or her voice. But she remembers that she made her happy. She remembers she was sad to leave the city and leave her behind. 

Andy runs her fingers over the irregular grooves of the cuneiform. Then she sets it aside and looks up at the stars. In the letter, the girl compared Andy to the stars — distant and cold, yet beautiful and familiar.

Andy shivers and pulls her coat tighter around her. Up above, the blinking lights of an airplane slowly crawl across the sky. She'd told Nile she had been worshipped as a god, once. She hadn't told her she had believed herself to be one. 

There was an island, Andy remembers. Far, far in the North. Impossible to reach. She had reached it and laid eyes on the last wooly mammoths alive in the world. She still remembered how the earth shook under their heavy, slow steps. She remembers how they smelled; a little like wet dog, a little like horse. Their fur had been coarse and matted in places. 

Six millenia, closer to seven. And one day would be her last. Like Lykon. She's sure of that. All things must come to an end. That is the only thing that has remained constant throughout all these years. Nothing lasts forever, not even Andromache the Scythian. Who is older than Scythia. Who is older than her name.

**Author's Note:**

> They have a Switch Lite, fyi. I put a lot of thought into the Team With A Switch, so there you go. 
> 
> All the gratitude and love in the world go, as always, to Beth <3


End file.
